When reading Karl Kapp’s new book, I was pleased to see reference to Jesse Schell, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center. I remember seeing Jesse deliver the keynote at last year’s Learning 3.0 conference where he, too, discussed gaming and learning. One of the points that Jesse made was you don’t need to “gamify” learning—games have inherent properties that lead to knowledge, growth and behavior change. So to gamify learning, what we really need to do is identify what makes games such effective tools, and incorporate that into our design.

His point was that games are good, but applying games to every kind of learning won’t automatically make them better. And to drive his point home, he asked: what if we focused on Chocofication—adding chocolate to everything? Chocolate is tasty, so wouldn’t it make everything better? And to illustrate, he offered many things you could dip in chocolate—some delightful, some unusual, and some downright disgusting.

It won’t have much impact without Jesse’s narration (like most good presentations, it’s mostly pictures with very few words), but you can enjoy looking at all the things that Jesse wanted to dip in chocolate (including his stapler).

Schell briefly made many of the same points that Kapp makes in-depth. Gaming isn’t for every learning experience. Simply dipping learning in game sauce does not automatically make it better; in fact, randomly applying vaguely game-ish attributes to learning (like points, badges, and levels) can trivialize the content.

So why all this talk of gamification? Like most aspects of learning, it comes down to motivation, engagement, and behavior change. There’s a reason we’ve been playing games for thousands of years. They engage us, they draw us in, they make us want to gain skills and improve our performance.

See?

Karl’s books over the years show a definite progression, from identifying and classifying a concept to ultimately codifying that which seems uncodifiable. In Gadgets, Games, and Gizmos for Learning, he looked at the role of story and creativity in learning with a broad brush; in Learning in 3D (with Tony O’Driscoll), he began to put some definitions around the wild, wild west that was Immersive Learning. And in this book, he’s looking for the rules, the trends, and the benefits that tie gaming to learning.

The good news is that we’ve got a good head start with gaming. Gaming has been pretty well codified; the creation of new technologies modifies the rules, but doesn’t inherently change them. Concepts like “boss challenges” and “leveling up” didn’t start with Nintendo. We’ve been “leveling up” ever since someone put one checker on top of another, called it a “King,” and determined that it now had a new set of powers.

So how do we bring the power of gaming to learning? That’s what the book is for. Karl says it better than I ever could. You can get your own copy here:

One Response

Thanks so much for being a stop on the Gamification blog book tour. I really appreciate your perspective on gamification since you have spent so much time thinking about and developing highly interactive learning events. And I would recommend to people that they read your post,The Science of Simulation: Mirror Neurons

I think your bringing in Schell’s concept of Chocofication is wonderful. (and fattening I am sure). The stapler look good but chocolate covered cottage cheese, I cringe.

As you rightly indicated, gamification is not a cure-all as some would believe nor is it the ultimate evil Instead as you stated “to gamify learning, what we really need to do is identify what makes games such effective tools, and incorporate that into our design.”

What I think the term “gamification” does is allow designers and developers of learning the freedom and permission to take about engagements and interactivity in a way that was not always possible previously. We’ve always known that we need engagement in learning and not simply page turners but many times creative instructional designers are thwarted by managers and others who don’t understand the difference between reading about a procedure and performing a procedure.

When we mention “gamification” and explain how we can take the best elements of games and add them into the instruction, that opens a lot of eyes. It’s a way of “backing into” engagement and interactivity.

Also, I appreciated how you talking about the evolution of the books. I had not really thought about it and, as one of the few people on Earth who have read all three, I appreciate your insights. The books do take on a progression that I hadn’t considered but as I reflect, I am particularly excited how this book builds on the concepts of Gadgets, Games and Gizmos and just last night I was visiting a class in Second Life and we were trying to match the Learning Archetypes from “Learning in 3D” to different attributes of games, we especially focused on the collaborative aspects and how engaging games, like the currently popular “Draw It” have a strong social and collaborative aspect.

Thanks again Rich, you are always thoughtful with your comments and input. You’ve given me number of things to think about in your post.

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